OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES OLD IRONSIDES1 AY, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar; The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Or know the conquered knee; Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; 1 One genuine lyric outburst, however, done in this year of the law, almost made him in a way actually famous. The frigate Constitution, historic indeed, but old and unseaworthy, then lying in the navy yard at Charlestown, was condemned by the Navy Department to be destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper paragraph, and it stirred him. On a scrap of paper, with a lead pencil, he rapidly shaped the impetuous stanzas of Old Ironsides,' and sent them to the Daily Advertiser, of Boston. Fast and far they travelled through the newspaper press of the country; they were even printed in hand-bills and circulated about the streets of Washington. An occurrence, which otherwise would probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a national indignation. The astonished Secretary made haste to retrace a step which he had taken quite innocently in the way of business. The Constitution's tattered ensign was not torn down. The ringing, spirited verses gave the gallant ship a reprieve, which satisfied sentimentality, and a large part of the people of the United States had heard of Ŏ. W. Holmes, law student at Cambridge, who had only come of age a month ago. (Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 79, 80.) This is probably the only case in which a government policy was changed by the verses of a college student. The frigate Constitution was launched in 1797, first served in the war against the pirates in the Mediterranean, and made a brilliant record in the war of 1812. In 1934 she was almost entirely rebuilt, and continued in commission until 1881. From that time she was kept at the navy yard at Portsmouth, N. H., until in 1897 she was taken to the Charlestown Navy Yard for the celebration of the centenary of her launching. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track); 'Ah!' said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, 'What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!' Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Tore from the trembling father's arms And Heaven had spared to me 30 1831. which had something imposing and something odd about it for youthful eyes like mine. He was often pointed at as one of the Indians' of the famous Boston Tea-Party' of 1774. His aspect among the crowds of a later generation reminded me of a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage all around it. I make this explanation for the benefit of those who have been puzzled by the lines, The way in which it came to be written in a somewhat singular measure was this. I had become a little known as a versifier, and I thought that one or two other young writers were following my efforts with imitations, not meant as parodies and hardly to be considered improvements on their models. I determined to write in a measure which would at once betray any copyist. So far as it was suggested by any previous poem, the echo must have come from Campbell's 'Battle of the Baltic,' with its short terminal lines, such as the last of these two, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore. But I do not remember any poem in the same measure, except such as have been written since its publication. (HOLMES.) Holmes wrote to his publishers in 1894: 'I have lasted long enough to serve as an illustration of my own poem.. It was with a smile on my lips that I wrote it; I cannot read it without a sigh of tender remembrance. I hope it will not sadden my older readers, while it may amuse some of the younger ones to whom its experiences are as yet only floating fancies.' Lincoln called the poem inexpressibly touching,' and knew it by heart. Holmes possessed a copy of it written out by Edgar Allan Poe. Whittier (Prose Works, vol. iii, p. 381) called it a unique compound of humor and pathos.' And he shakes his feeble head, The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest And the names he loved to hear My grandmamma has said That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose But now his nose is thin, And a crook is in his back, 1831 or 1832. LA GRISETTE 1833.2 Ан, Clemence ! when I saw thee last I dreamed not in that idle glance Just when it was written I cannot exactly say, no in what paper or periodical it was first published. It must have been written before April, 1833; probably in 1831 or 1832. It was republished in the first edition of my poems in 1836. (HOLMES.) It was in fact published in The Harbinger, Boston, 1833. And only left to memory's trance A shadow and a name. The few strange words my lips had taught Their gentler signs, which often brought All, all returned, more sweet, more fair; I walked where saint and virgin keep I knew that thou hadst woes to weep, I watched where Genevieve was laid, Alas! but where was thine ? And when the morning sun was bright, When wind and wave were calm, And flamed, in thousand-tinted light, The rose of Notre Dame, I wandered through the haunts of men, Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, In vain, in vain; we meet no more, Nor dream what fates befall; And long upon the stranger's shore My voice on thee may call, 10 20 30 Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes; When years have clothed the line in They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new. |